Director: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Cast: Maiara Walsh, Cody Christian, Brant Daugherty

There's a lot to be said about examining something that is hugely successful with the public. For example, you can see from that success an insight into what the taste is of the public of a certain country, religion, or social status. It gives us an insight into the human brain, the human brain being something that in many ways still stumps doctors and other professionals regarding how it works. An equally interesting thing regarding success that is often worth a look is how the popular thing came into existence in the first place, and subsequently seeing the climb of that certain thing from unknown status to much loved by many. There are many factors that can come along the way to boost the popularity, and there are subsequently just as many factors that could come along to drag down that certain something so that it loses the taste of the sometimes-fickle public, so much so that the once-popular thing is nearly or completely forgotten. This is one reason why I find the decline of popular and/or strong aspects of culture just as fascinating as the process of climbing to success. It has happened to many (not all, but many) once triumphant things since the dawn of mankind, and it proves that the attempt to remain on top forever can just be as hard as the process to become triumphant in the first place. Consider the Roman Empire, for example. At one point, it was one of the strongest (if not the strongest) empires in the world. But over the centuries, the empire was slowly weakened by many factors - overspending, the splitting of the Empire, corruption in government, and repeated attacks from Barbarian tribes in Europe, just to name a few of them

Actor Charles Bronson once said in a 1979 interview, "Nobody stays on top forever. Nobody. It's impossible." Although clearly his statement could be applied to many cultural aspects over the centuries, he was almost certainly thinking about the movie-making business itself. And not just people - whole movie genres for that matter. Then there is the parody film (a.k.a. spoof film) genre. For the few who don't know what I am talking about, a quick look at Wikipedia basically states they are movies that imitate (in a comic fashion) elements and conventions found in certain popular kinds of movies. For a further explanation, take a look at what is considered the first parody movie, the 1980 Airplane! That movie was basically a parody of the disaster film genre that had been popular years earlier, spoofing certain scenes and elements from those movies. The movie was a huge commercial and critical (except for the impossible-to-please Rex Reed) hit, and over the next few decades other filmmakers were inspired to make their own, such as Student Bodies (parodying slasher films), Spaceballs (parodying Star Wars and other space films) and Fatal Instinct (parodying erotic thriller films). However, in this present day and age, with the very occasional exception like the recent reboot/sequel of The Naked Gun, the parody film genre has lost all audience interest, and precious few filmmakers seem particularly interested in reviving it. Why? I think there are several reasons. One, these kinds of comedies are much harder to write and direct than many other kinds of comedies. You have to basically pull off gag after gag with a machine gun-like pace, which would give headaches for most writers and directors. A second reason I think is that in this multimedia entertainment age of ours, we see everything from TV shows to YouTube videos basically doing the same thing as those parody films. Just as printing excess currency makes it lose value, the glut of parody shows and TV shows has sapped the lustre of the parody film genre

But I think there is a third reason for the decline of the parody film, and I think that it's the biggest reason of all: The sad fact is that the majority of these parody films have been pretty terrible. I don't just conclude that theory from what critics have said about each of these films, but also from personal viewing experience. The few successful parody films that there are are ones that work very hard, have proper comic timing, as well as the obvious fact of them actually being funny. To me, most parody films just go the obvious route - oh, let's recreate a scene from other movie, people will instantly chuckle at that! But you can't just recreate something - you have to find a way to present it in a funny manner that shows the absurd side of it. Most parody film filmmakers just don't get that, as well as often having no idea how to make funny gags of their own that don't refer to anything. The biggest offenders are the notorious writer/director team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg. Just look at the movies of theirs that I'm sure you've mostly or completely heard about: Spy Hard, Date Movie, Vampires Suck, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet The Spartans, among others; completely unfunny spoof films. Eventually (and understandably) major Hollywood studios stopped returning their calls, but that didn't stop them. They had several years earlier started to also produce their own parody films, not just write and direct them, so they kept their Hollywood careers going for a few more years. The Starving Games is one of their last efforts to date (they haven't made a new movie since 2015 - thank goodness.) It was pretty much released straight to DVD, making it an unknown movie. I decided to take a look at it not because I was intrigued, but because I would almost certainly see a film that would give me an excuse to warn readers of all of the films from Seltzer and Friedberg. The central character of this "film" is a young woman by the name of Kantmiss Evershot (Maiara Walsh, Desperate Housewives), who lives sometime in a dystopian future. Kantmiss has become very skilled at archery during her life, and she and her wannabe boyfriend Dale (Brant Daughtery, Pretty Little Liars) make a trip to District 12 in order to witness the 75th annual Starving Games tournament. Presided over by President Snowballs (Diedrich Bader, American Housewife), the tournament involves its participants from all districts thrown together to hunt and kill each other, the last survivor being the winner and getting, amoung other prizes, a gift card to Subway. Although it seems that Kantmiss' young sister Petunia (Kennedy Hermansen, SKAM Austin) will be one of the selected participants, Kantmiss ends up being one of the chosen. Kantmiss is then let loose with the other participants, including a potentially dangerous opponent by the name of Peter Malarky (Cody Christian, Teen Wolf). But as the arrows start flying, Kantmiss slowly starts feeling that maybe working together with Peter would be the best strategy - especially since Snowballs and the games' overseer (Dean J. West, The Ledge) aim to sabotage Kantmiss' efforts.

Let me get straight to the point: The Starving Games is not funny. At all. The majority of its attempts at humor are ill-conceived from the get-go, and the remaining failed gags you can kind of see that they might have been sort of funny with a greatly improved execution, but as they are, they are completely botched and are completely unfunny. You probably got some idea of the unfunniness from the above paragraph. A Subway gift card as a prize? That is the kind of "humor" that is to be expected from a six-year-old who is still some ways off from learning and appreciating what real humor is. Believe me, the movie has plenty of other gags that come across with that same level of laziness and imbecility. But even when The Starving Games gets a little more ambitious with its humor, the gags fall flat on their face just as hard. For example, there are many references to movies popular at the time - Harry Potter wanders into the frame and is told, "Your movie franchise is over!". A character hallucinates into thinking she's one of the aliens in Avatar, and sees James Cameron gleefully playing with money. The characters from The Expendables pop up, and along the way there are pop culture references to everything from Dos Equis commercials to the Angry Birds. Such references are not just unfunny, they all seem awkwardly shoehorned in instead of coming across natural for this particular cinematic world. The movie seems obsessed with finding material from other sources over coming up with fresh and funny gags of its own, the low point being a sequence that is a blatant rip-off of the classic scene in Monty Python And The Holy Grail where a knight gets his limbs cut off one by one and takes it in stride, only this time the comic idea is executed in the sloppiest and heavy-handed way possible.

As for when The Starving Games comes up with its own gags, they cause gags from any person in the audience. Is giving someone with acne some acne cream funny? Is trying unsuccessfully to climb a tree but suddenly finding a ladder leaning against the tree funny? Is getting hit in the face with bird droppings funny? It's made worse that many of these gags are done in an overkill style, making sure to milk a gag to death and to make sure dim-witted viewers understand the joke. For example, one character kicks a second character in the buttocks, and their foot is shoved deep in. The second character then says, "When was the last time you trimmed your toenails?" To make sure we then get it, we suddenly get a shot of the pulled-out foot with its long and jagged toenails. Was that last shot necessary? We got the point with the comment, the point also being how desperately unfunny the gag was. As I said, there is nothing about The Starving Games that gets close to even being mildly amusing. NOTHING! The movie's total unfunniness is enough that I would give this movie the lowest rating possible if I used a ratings system. However, I see that I still have a ways to go with this review before it can be of sufficient length to my reading audience. So... what else to talk about? Talking about the dead humor some more would be redundant. Well... I guess I could talk a bit about the performances of the no-name cast, or to put it more exactly, "performances". In fairness, I did see in the actors signs that with the right material and proper direction, they could be passable, in supporting roles at least. None of the principal cast has enough charisma to really grab your attention sufficiently if they were in a lead role. Of course, you do have to consider that the filming conditions would drag down even the most seasoned and professional actor. Perhaps sensing that they were in an utter turkey, the cast felt it just wasn't worth it to give more passionate performances.

It also should be considered that these actors are pretty much given characters to play that haven't been written to evoke interest in the audience. We learn almost nothing about their pasts, what they are thinking, or what makes them tick. Who cares if they make asses of themselves? Main characters in successful parody films like Airplane! and Top Secret you could identify with to a good degree, and laugh with sympathy and understanding with their problems. The Friedberg/Seltzer script for The Starving Games doesn't just fail with its dead-on-arrival humor and lack of character development. The story makes the fatal mistake of not just assuming audiences will recognize all the pop culture references, but also assuming audiences will be familiar with The Hunger Games movies and/or books. If you haven't partaken of the original franchise, most likely you will be bewildered with some story elements. But even if you have the necessary knowledge, odds are you'll still find the story thin and lacking depth, not just for the fact the movie abruptly ends with the characters not having any time to deal with the final consequences that happened seconds before. For one thing, the movie only runs 71 minutes if you don't count the subsequent 11 minutes of end credits plus the (extremely unfunny) outtakes montage. As for the Friedberg/Stelzer direction, should it come as a surprise that it's as hopeless as their script? I know they were working with a really low budget (which also shows how lousy they were as producers with raising a budget), but had they been really trying, maybe we wouldn't have gotten things like bland locations, crummy CGI effects, footage being recycled (more than once), an abundance of close-ups, and a clear feeling that not only do they not know how to write a gag, but also don't know how to stage it. By now I feel that some of you readers might have some morbid curiosity about The Starving Games, feeling that its utter failure may in a way be fascinating like witnessing the aftermath of a car wreck. Well, let me tell you that the movie is the kind of car wreck that involves a family with very young children being totalled along with their vehicle - too depressing and traumatic to see. By the way, while researching The Starving Games, I learned that in the subsequent year there was another parody film of The Hunger Games franchise, which was called The Hungover Games. I don't think any time soon I am going to watch that movie, so I can't tell you which effort is worse.

(Posted December 24, 2025)